Flash Fiction Friday

Beverly stepped to the edge of the embankment.  Icicles loaded the trees, bending them close to the ground.   All around her came the sounds of snapping branches, cracking like whips as the weight of the ice tore them from tree trunks.  She knew it was not safe here but she had no choice.  Tommy had told her he threw the gun into the water right before the ice storm hit last night.  Beverly couldn't believe he had been that stupid.  That gun was the only thing that tied him to the murder and all it took was for one foolish hunter stumbling across it and they would lose everything.

Thirty feet downstream from the old homestead he had said.  Thirty feet to freedom if she could just find the darn thing.  The river was cluttered with ice chunks and debris.  Beverly could only hope the gun hadn't traveled too far downstream from where he threw it in.  She was getting awfully tired of cleaning up his messes.

Placing one boot gingerly on the partial trail leading down to the water's edge, Beverly strained to see if  she could figure out where the gun had gone.  She was just about to take another step when there came a thunderous roar of snapping branches immediately behind her.  Beverly's scream echoed into the cold morning air as her foot slipped on the muddy trail and she fell, tumbling faster and faster toward the water's edge.  If the mangled trees didn't break her decent, she would almost certainly drown in the river unless a miracle happened...

***Now it's your turn.  What happens next?  Do the trees stop Beverly from drowning in the river?  Or does the water seal her fate?  Maybe there is a miracle just around the bend.  Join in the fun with a sentence or a paragraph.  You don't have to run with my flash fiction...if someone else comments and you want to add to their story, then go for it.  Let's see where this picture prompt takes us!***